1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an aircraft position indicator device.
Such a device is more specifically adapted to a rotary wing aircraft, notably a helicopter.
Although not exclusively, it is particularly well suited to indicating the position of an aircraft with respect to a guiding beam transmitted by a radio beacon on the ground close to a runway, facilitating the capture and tracking of said guiding beam by the aircraft on landing, and therefore constitutes an appreciable aid to the pilot.
2. Background Art
In a manner that is known in itself, an ordinary indicator of this type indicates the angular deviation in a vertical or horizontal plane between the aircraft equipped with said indicator and the axis of the guiding beam. Using such an indicator, it is therefore possible to determine at any time the current position of the aircraft with respect to said guiding beam.
However, it reveals nothing about possible interception of the guiding beam by the aircraft.
So when the interception occurs close to the source of transmission of the guiding beam, where the width of said beam is low, the aircraft can cross it without the crew realizing it, which notably risks causing erroneous interpretation of the trajectory of the aircraft.
Consequently, to avoid such potentially dangerous erroneous interpretation, pilots must continuously monitor said conventional indicators, which monopolizes their attention and thus distracts them from flight control.